simon's blog

I'm on holiday! In Madeira. It's not technically my first time here, but the first time was more than twenty years ago off a cruise ship. So functionally it is. I get occasional flashes of familiarity that tell me when I visited a place back then, but really it's all new.

Yesterday I did lots of walking and visited a 500-year-old convent, with a lot of impressive tiles and beautiful ceilings.
Today I took two cable cars to visit two different gardens on two different mountains. And also did a lot of walking, much of which was Up.

The gardens were a touch disappointing, and at this time of year mostly felt like tourist traps. Things might be different in summer, and it is certainly unfair to judge a garden by how it looks in December. But I didn't mind, because I was enjoying being out and about at altitude, with views and nice air. I also love travelling by cable car. It's not necessary nowadays - all of the places I went have road access - but it's smooth and calm and quiet, and by looking down you get a fascinating insight into bits of the town you'd never normally see.

One thing that struck me is that Madeira's roads are a marvel of engineering and, I suspect, EU money, thanks to the challenging topography... but beyond this, the infrastructure is incredibly three-dimensional. Dual carriageways will zip across the city, passing over valley roads to enter tunnels only a few metres under somebody's house. I'm almost sure there are roads in tunnels that pass over each other. One of the cable cars I took today passed under a power line. I admire the intricacy and the 3D thinking, and I am in awe at its construction.

I'm here to wind down and not feel pressured to do anything. That's nice, but of course it's going to need a lot more than a few days of that to make more than a short term difference.

I finally finished this, what must be years after it came out.

It wasn't a patch on the first season. Or even on S2/3. There were some really cringy episodes where I had to stop watching, and force myself to finish later.

I feel that Otis's story was largely told somewhere during S3, with parts left to close out. Maeve's story had a little left, but not a lot. This season was mostly about Eric, and also about Jean. And that's fine. They had significant and worthwhile stuff to tell, and I think it would have worked better if it had pivoted to being more about them. But they kept the focus on Otis even though there wasn't much more to say with him except as part of others' journeys, and that led to some really stupid contrived plotlines and so forth.

Still, it was a nice ending. I was pleased that there was some resolution and optimism for everybody, but that it wasn't happily ever after for everybody concerned.

I'm on holiday!
I haven't been blogging much on this trip, because it's mostly a trip to see friends and family. But yesterday was all about tourism, and I spent the day in Aachen, Germany, in 36C heat. I came here once before with friend L, when she showed me the place briefly, and I knew I needed to come back. Six years later, here I am.

My favourite thing about Aachen, although I've no idea how true it is, is this quote from Wikivoyage:

"As Aachen is a legally recognised spa, it could call itself Bad Aachen, but refuses to do so, as it then would no longer be first in almost all alphabetical lists."

My second favourite thing about Aachen, and the reason I'm here, is undoubedly the cathedral. It's unique, and beautiful. The central octagonal part dates from the 9th century, while the gothic "extension" is newer. It was built as the seat of Charlemagne (and this is why the octagonal shape - it resembles an Orthodox cathedral and he was making a statement about being equal to the rulers of the eastern empire). The throne that was allegedly his, and almost certainly wasn't, is present in the upper level. But it's not really the history that interests me so much as the look of the thing, with wonderful mosaics on the ceilings and a general sense of opulance that actually - in contrast to most Catholic opulance - manages to look well-designed. I didn't bring my good camera on this trip, but here are some phonecam photos.

In "Simon continues watching kids' shows".... After adoring seasons 1 and 2 of Hilda some years ago, I finally got around to S3 in the last few weeks.

It's less about Hilda, and more about her mother. As such, unfortunately it back-burners a lot of what made the first two episodes so wonderful: the dynamic of the three kids, the whimsy, Hilda's ability to make friends with everything she meets... in tackling darker and more serious themes it becomes a more serious show, and it suffers from it.

Still, it does wrap things up nicely and give the series a satisfying ending. And if you haven't watched Hilda, you really should - at least for S1-2. It takes 2-3 episodes to really get going.